"Those brick streets are the defining element of Freedmen's Town. There's no more room for compromise. Everything else has been compromised away," says Catherine Roberts, a board member of the Rutherford B.H. Yates Museum.

"Those brick streets are the defining element of Freedmen's Town....

The brick streets, once the pride of black Houston, are now a bumpy mess, more asphalt patches than brick. On that, at least, everybody agrees.

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